Key Points
- Catena Media’s Q3 revenue dropped by a whopping 29% to just €8.3 million, with a €0.7 million bonus reversal basically cancelling out the company’s entire adjusted EBITDA.
- The company saw its shares drop by more than 21% on Monday that’s a big hit while a €30 million to €35 million impairment basically wipes out the whole group’s market value.
- TraffiqX is now due out in the first quarter of 2027, that’s much quicker than the first half of the year as was thought just last August.
One Important Number Makes a Weak Quarter Clear
Catena Media’s Q3 adjusted EBITDA came in at €0.7 million, but that’s only because the company reversed a bonus for the 2026 employee bonus scheme. Without that bonus reversal, the company’s adjusted EBITDA would have been barely above zero. On top of this the company’s revenue dropped by 29% to just €8.3 million from €11.6 million the year before. The results are still unaudited so we don’t actually know the company’s net income figure yet. Nasdaq preliminary results notice
The news didn’t end on a high note there. Catena Media has now pretty much given up on reaching double-digit growth for 2026 which was previously their target and they’re planning a non-cash impairment of €30 million to €35 million on some of their intangible assets. By the end of the nine months revenue had dropped to €30.1 million from €31.0 million last time around, and adjusted EBITDA had fallen from €5.2 million to a mere €4.6 million.
It’s no surprise that investors reacted badly when trading opened in Stockholm on Monday. Shares fell a massive 21.51% to SEK 2.50, wiping out almost all of the company’s gains this year. Gaming Intelligence report Prior to the warning the company’s stock was up 93% this year a huge gain but it had still lost almost 95% over the last five years a disaster. Monday’s price was also way down to SEK 3.34 reached after their last set of results. MarketScreener profit warning report
From a Bonus Year to a Bonus Reversal
We’ve seen a complete 180-degree turn from just a few months ago. In February Catena Media’s Q4 2025 revenue jumped an amazing 53% to €15.6 million and the shares rose more than 70% in response. Q4 2025 results report said CEO Manuel Stan had just rewarded staff with a company-wide bonus for the first time in years. The Q3 reversal on the other hand basically cancels out the accruals for the 2026 bonus programme not the actual bonus itself.
Since then though, revenue has been steadily falling from about €12.3 million in Q1, to €9.5 million in Q2 and now €8.3 million in Q3. And the reported adjusted EBITDA margin has followed the same path falling from 30% in late 2025 to just 8% now.
Search, Budgets and a Model with Little Cushion
Three pressures contributed to the drop, and out of those, only one is likely to subside with the change of seasons. Stan was unambiguous: “This was a poor quarter and our results show just that. The search landscape is rapidly changing, and as a primarily CPA-driven organisation, our results reflect the impact of these changes.” Changes to generative search impact the way people discover brands online, resulting in a lower number of visits to affiliate websites. Catena’s own rankings also deteriorated due to the influence of artificial intelligence and increased low-relevancy content. This happened while some operators reduced their marketing budgets during the summer season.
Independent studies provide evidence for the reasons why clicks have become a problem for affiliates in general. According to the study conducted by Pew Research Centre, 900 US adults used Google search with AI summary and clicked on a traditional result 8% of the time, as opposed to 15% of the time when there was no summary. Although it is not a direct reflection of Catena’s visitors, this data illustrates the challenges that the company faces in light of its heavy reliance on Google. It is especially challenging in light of the fact that North America delivered 97% of Catena’s revenue from continuing operations in Q2. Catena Media Q3 report Any shift in the way American people search for things impacts Catena immediately.
Moreover, the deal structure of Catena makes each missed visit even more painful. Over 90% of new customers sign cost per acquisition deals, resulting in limited recurring revenue.
A Long-Term Warning
All of the above did not happen suddenly, and Stan himself described the process that led to this situation. Back in November 2025, he stated that he saw headwinds in the form of generative search and remained cautious about the short-term outlook. Catena Media Q3 report coverage In August, his statement became more serious as he admitted on the Q2 earnings call that “the same rankings now convert into fewer clicks and less traffic than before.” Catena Media Q2 earnings call transcript As a result, the adjusted EBITDA margin dropped to 13% in Q2, from 22% in Q1.
Catena’s solution is TraffiqX – a new platform aimed at reducing the company’s dependence on search. As Stan said, the company is “reducing our dependence on search by diversifying our revenue streams”, and prediction markets and loyalty programs are also included.
A Big Problem Bigger than the Company
The scale of the planned write-down comes into sharper focus when you put it against the share price. Catena’s latest buyback disclosure gives us the total number of shares outstanding: 78,774,442. Of those, 3,694,809 are locked away in treasury. So we’ve got around 75,079,633 shares up for grabs, and at Monday’s opening price of SEK2.50 that’s knocking on a bit over SEK187.7m. Catena Media share buyback disclosure According to the ECB SEK exchange rate of SEK11.104 per euro on 19th of October, that works out at roughly €16.9m. The €30m to €35m hit they’re expecting is basically double that amount. And the good news is it’s not like it’s going to drain the company’s bank account, this is just a non-cash accounting thing.
There’s a rather awkward detail tucked away in that same disclosure. Over the period 12th to 16th of October, Catena went out and bought back 138,700 shares at an average price ranging from SEK3.11 to SEK3.17. The programme is aimed at long-term incentive plans and runs under EU Safe Harbour rules through ABG Sundal Collier. Don’t get me wrong, there’s no smoke of improper conduct here, but those shares cost them 25% more than the opening price on Monday.
Long-term investors have their own reasons to be paying close attention. It was only in August when CFO Michael Grew said that interest on those €43.7m hybrid securities will just keep getting deferred, with €7.0m still unpaid as of July 10th 2026. Catena Media hybrid capital securities information. And what’s more these are the same securities that rank ahead of shareholders, meaning that if Catena ever decides to distribute cash to shareholders then they’d have to sort that interest first. They’ve also offered to buy the hybrid securities back at 20% of their face value, or €20 for every €100. And you know what? Only a relatively small chunk, a paltry SEK12.5m of nominal value, was tendered in by the holders, and they received just SEK2.5m in cash.
What to Watch Out For on The 10th of November?
Catena is scheduled to drop its full Q3 report on November 10th at 17:35 CET and then do a webcast an hour later at 18:00 CET. When the dust settles, what will we find out about the size of that impairment and which brands it will hit hardest? Will Catena still be able to keep a positive adjusted EBITDA, once those pesky bonus reversals no longer artificially pump up the figures? And most importantly, will they finally give us any hard numbers on TraffiqX before it even gets its first launch in the first quarter?
Expert Analysis: Catena’s Capital Choices Make it Worth Keeping a Closer Eye on Than its Search Problem
To our minds, the search slump is only one half the story here, and perhaps not even the half that reveals the most. Every affiliate or affiliate out there has got some kind of struggle with search to contend with; not everyone has made the capital choices Catena has made over the past 12 months. Not every affiliate has said to hybrid investors “just hang on indefinitely for that interest” and then splurge on buying back shares to fund their staff incentive plans. They then offered investors an exit at 20% of face value, and nearly all of them said no thanks.
Each decision on its own is perfectly legal and was certainly disclosed to everyone concerned, but the sequence of events here rather tells its own story about whose patience the board is most willing to test. And between you and me, we’re still pretty sceptical that TraffiqX will be enough to turn Catena’s fortunes around in 2027. You see, a marketplace by its very nature needs traffic, and Catena still hasn’t come clean on where that traffic is meant to be coming from if search continues to be a no-go area.
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